These institutions apply some of the principles of the education of the military colleges to the executive development of managers from both the public and private sectors of the economy.
The Seven Years' War demonstrated the inadequacy of the education that generals had at that time, but it was not until 1801 that staff training in a modern sense began when Gerhard von Scharnhorst became the director of the Prussian Military Academy.
Prussian defeats by Napoleon I led to the creation of the Allgemeine Kriegsschule (General War Academy) with a nine-month programme covering mathematics, tactics, strategy, staff work, weapons science, military geography, languages, physics, chemistry, and administration.
[citation needed] Nations have taken a wide variety of approaches to the form, curriculum and status of staff colleges, but have much in common with the Prussian courses of the early 19th Century.
[citation needed] Some courses act as filters for promotion or entry into a specialist staff corps.